Scott Atwell Star Trek Discussion thread (Series and Films) (1 Viewer)

[Ockeghem]

In this case, I think interesting should suffice.

http://www.startrek.com/article/star-trek-and-newspapers-part-3

 

[Nelson Au]

Scott, I neglected to mention that I thought you might get a kick out of The Beatles example. Those answers are correct for the twofer and threefer actors! I hadn't thought about the fact that Ms Muldaur was a Doctor three times! Great start! That link was interesting! I kept thinking it must have been quite a feat to track down so many articles from the 70's and the other decades to gather all their data for their articles. I never saw any of those except a couple of TV Guide articles from that time about Star Trek Phase II and then the time for Starlog magazine came out covering that Chicago convention then TMP. It still feels like the dim time of our history.

 

[Ockeghem]

"It still feels like the dim time of our history."Love it. And of course, many of those articles were written by ... "The Old Ones."

I watched me some early John Farrell tonight. I have a few observations from that episode that I will post later this week.

 

[Nelson Au]

You have the course, Mr. Farrell.

 

[Ockeghem]

I do so love that footage very much Nelson. And you've nailed which episode I watched last night, too.

 

[Nelson Au]

One wild lucky guess.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys, Is the trivia question too easy? So far we've had these actors named as those who appears twice as different characters, plus a few that made three visits.Stewart MossJohn HarmonJon Lormer - Scott - Theodore Haskins, Tamar and old man.Mark Lenard - Scott - Romulan Commander and SarekDiana Muldaur - Scott- Drs Ann Mulhall and Miranda Jones, and later Polaski.Laurence MontaigneWilliam Campbell - Scott, Koloth and TrelaneMorgan WoodwardMorgan FarleyBarbara BabcockBarry RussoCharles MacaulayIan WolfeBart LaRueCraig HundleyPhyllis DouglasI'm finding my desire to read These are the Voyages Season Two winding down only because it's almost over, so I want to drag it out. I started the chapter on Return to Tomorrow. I see Mr. Coon is still involved and was enthusiastic to the story. So far, I'm only three pages in, but what stuck me was that while Coon liked the intellectual ideas presented, and Roddenberry was very happy to see a story that already had Sci-Fi elements in place, Roddenberry was very aware of what a mass audience can enjoy and stay with for an hour. So I found it partly off putting that he was trying to make sure the story wasn't too over intellectual. Yet he has to also balance that the series is action adventure too, so children can follow along and get excited. It's very interesting that through out the series, this balance of action, adventure, sci-fi, having a theme and message in the story was so well balanced and mostly worked. I've always thought that we Star Trek fans are partly into the series because it was about ideas and had something to say. That statement itself almost sounds like a snobby elitist description! But it's entertaining and fun too with characters we like and want to see again. Roddenberry's comment above says he wants to be sure that the mass audience is able to follow the story. Not because they are not smart, because I think he knew the audience he was aiming for was at least pretty smart, but to be sure he is able to reach as many as he can. There was something for the intellectual and something for the younger viewers and something's that really sets off your imagination. So he wasn't saying he wants to dumb down the story of Sargon, but he and Fontana wanted to avoid a confusing story and make the story clear for the audience to follow. I look forward to finishing the chapter. I peaked ahead and will be interested I what is said about Diana Muldaur and Ralph Senensky's last minute request to direct.

 

[Ockeghem]

Nelson,I thought you were going to post part two of the trivia question, and that this would pertain only to the selected few you chose to list in your initial post on the question. Was part two to name all of the others as Lee began to do above?

 

[Nelson Au]

Scott, sorry if I wasn't clear. I think part 1 was looking for the answer for all the commonality of all those actors, which were ones who had more then one appearance on Star Trek. Part 2 was to name the characters the actors played as you had started to do. But there is room to name more actors who had the opportunity to appear more then once as another character as Lee had started. I knew there were more, but the names escaped me at the time, it was an off the cuff the question to keep the trivia going.

 

[FanCollector]

Stewart Moss was Joe Tormolen and Hanar. John Harmon played Tepo and the homeless guy at the 21st Street Mission.Obviously Star Trek tended to avoid dumbing things down. One stereotype about television viewers, particularly in the days before VCRs, DVRs, and almost exclusively serialized dramas, was that they were always doing something else while the show was on in the background. I don't think that applied to most viewers, but I suppose it was true for some. A story like Return to Tomorrow would be especially hard to watch that way because of the actors playing more than one part. As you suggest, the real fans were not a concern; the more casual viewers the series always hoped to attract might have been. Also, Roddenberry had his stated dictum that something exciting should happen about every two pages. Once the transfers happen on the Enterprise, it was a little harder to get things moving at that pace in Return to Tomorrow. (I think they solved the problems in the end, and I think very highly of the episode. But I can see why the setup was challenging from an action standpoint.)

 

[Nelson Au]

Lee, that's two more! I'm adding those to the list below. What I never understood all these years is why is Harmon's homeless character called the Rodent in The City on the Edge of Forever. Stewart Moss - Lee - Joe Tormolan and HamarJohn Harmon - Tepo and RodentJon Lormer - Scott - Theodore Haskins, Tamar and old man.Mark Lenard - Scott - Romulan Commander and SarekDiana Muldaur - Scott- Drs Ann Mulhall and Miranda Jones, and later Polaski.Laurence MontaigneWilliam Campbell - Scott, Koloth and TrelaneMorgan WoodwardMorgan FarleyBarbara BabcockBarry RussoCharles MacaulayIan WolfeBart LaRueCraig HundleyPhyllis DouglasLee you are right that if you weren't closely following Return to Tomorrow, it is very possible to be wondering why Kirk's voice is echoing and Spock is laughing! I have to admit that for several shows today, I'm doing other things while it's on. But the shows I like, has my attention. This book is continuing to really show how much attention was paid to the writing. The producers are asking a lot of good questions for the writers. Why this, what is the reason for this action? Why are the main cast acting so dumb, etc. and I'm finally seeing how Roddenberry was using the research group to fact check the science.

 

[Nelson Au]

I just enjoyed the humorous antics of our visit to the Iotians. I have to hand it to them for the subtle bits Shatner and Nimoy did as they took over Krako and Bela's authority. By the way, as Scott noticed in This Side of Paradise, when Kirk, McCoy and Soock beam down to the yellow fire plug, I can see smoke pass in front of the camera!

 

[FanCollector]

Interesting about the smoke again. It's another outdoor shot, too. If you were right about the lights, maybe there is something that happened in colder weather outdoor shooting?I'm not sure "subtle" is the word I'd choose for the comedy in A Piece of the Action, but I do think it was funny. Shatner seems especially delighted to be doing the villain of the week in The Untouchables. The Kellam Deforest research stuff is great and I do think Roddenberry (and to a lesser extent, Coon) cared about the science to some degree. And it's useful to see the different reactions to the level of complaints by the fact checkers. When Sloman and the others complained that a whole storyline or dramatic situation was scientifically insupportable, they were mostly ignored. When they made specific criticisms of dialogue or action, the changes they suggested often happened. I sort of analogize the science in science fiction to the history in Westerns--that is to say that the drama has to come first, but believability is really important and anything the writer can do to make the world seem real, short of sacrificing story and character, is worth the trouble. I think Roddenberry saw it that way also, and he seemed genuinely proud of Star Trek's science. A little of that was showmanship, but even in private correspondence, he seemed very conscious of maintaining Star Trek's reality as much as reasonably possible.

 

[Nelson Au]

Regarding the smoke, my impression is it is from the lights, the smoke must happens from the heat they generate. But without more concrete evidence, I guess we'll have to just guess. As you said, it's an outdoor shot and the camera is from a high position, possibly above the lights like it was in Paradise. The only other shots I can think of would be from Arena. But the smoke would be a natural there.I finished the chapter Return to Tomorrow. From the way Cushman puts it, it seems that Roddenberry had a case for getting writing credit given he redid all the dialogue while Dugan still receive credit for the story. I think Roddenberry did improve the script by removing some of the more extreme elements that Dugan proposed. I never had any really strong thoughts that William Shatner was over acting in that episode. I can see Cushman's and Senensky's thinking that the famous scene about risk is our business being a bit pompous and Shatner's delivery was on the edge. But that seemed to work for me as Kirk being very passionate about the prospect of the opportunities. I'll have to watch this episode today again to revisit it. It's a shame that Senensky felt that the reduced schedule that Golf and Western had mandated the reduction of production and thus caused the live action filming to be rushed so he didn't have time to fine tune the performances. Again, I never thought it was that bad. Nimoy was terrific as the evil Henoch.It was also interesting to see the religious clash going on and how Dugan wasn't in agreement with Roddenberry's points of view. However, NBC wasn't crazy about the idea that Adam and Eve were specifically named as members of Sargon's planet. And I thought it was funny that Dugan as a former teacher was correcting Coon's spelling. At this stage of the series, I am really getting the message that a lot of people were getting fed up with working on Star Trek! Coon, Pevney and even Senensky.Oh yeah, as you mentioned, the paragraph about the people at De Forest Reseach's input was a nice piece in this chapter where they really praised Star Trek and Roddenberry for really caring and trying compared to the Allen shows on at the time.

 

[Ockeghem]

Thanks for the additional smoke reference Nelson. That would have been a great one to post during my 'smoke' trivia question!

Interestingly, although I am not that much of a fan of Return To Tomorrow (relatively speaking, of course), the scene you mention above is actually one of my favorites from the episode. I don't think Kirk is over-acting too much. But I suppose I could see where some might see it that way.

 

[FanCollector]

While I would argue that Return to Tomorrow gives Nimoy a much better part which he runs with and steals the show, I think Senensky's criticism of Shatner is a little excessive. The scene in which Sargon first takes over Kirk's body could have used a little stricter direction, but I think the scene in the briefing room is a nice one. And if it is overdone, perhaps some of that has to do with Senensky pushing in for history's longest close-up and the massive swells of Duning's score overlaid in post-production, rather than Shatner's work on camera.It's funny about WGA credit. They really don't tend to care much at all about dialogue. I have a copy of Dugan's draft of the script and Cushman is right in that almost all the dialogue was rewritten. But that alone would never get the Guild to change the credit, especially if the rewrite was by a staff member which in this case it certainly was. (Not saying whether I think that policy is fair or not; it is simply a fact.) So looking to the structural changes in the script, Roddenberry still had a case for partial credit, but it wasn't the slam dunk he seemed to believe it would be. However the credit was allotted, the aired version is definitely far superior to the draft.I was stunned by how everyone made such a big deal about the Adam and Eve thing also. Not so much that NBC and Stan Robertson objected; I would have expected that. But rather that he seemed to think that if that element was excised, the script's main theme was eliminated and the story should be shelved. Even in the original version, it is a minor point and the rewriting of the exchange has almost no impact whatsoever on the story's action or its deeper meanings, as far as I can see.

 

[Nelson Au]

Have a look for the smoke Scott the next time to visit Iotia. I watched Return to Tomorrow earlier today. I agree the extreme close-up on Shatner was kind of an unusual choice. And the music really amped up the speech. But I felt as I said above, it felt to me Kirk was being passionate about the opportunity. And the editors used good reaction shots of Scotty and Mulhall and Spock and McCoy. When Sargon first takes over Kirk's body, and after William Shatner does his writhing, I thought his awkward walking was an appropriate choice given Sargon wouldn't remember how to walk and such. But Henoch and Thalassa weren't as clumsy. Given the two famous bloopers from this episode plus the shot of the make up removal from Blackburn, it's amazing that Senenski was able to finish filming on time with Shatner unable to keep a straight face as Muldaur walks up to him in sickbay. I watched that scene closely, and it appears they never got the shot because they cut away right after McCoy walks in and sees Kirk. The use of the close ups worked to finish the scene. Oh yeah, this episode marks George Takei's return from The Green Berets, his quotes illustrate his disappointment upon return with a few lines in this episode and missing the earlier ones. That must have been tough.

 

[Nelson Au]

I've read the story behind the story section for Patterns of Force. I'll read the production section tonight. I was confused a little by this chapter. I had to do a little research while reading it. Cushman says that Paul Schneider had proposed a story called Tomorrow the Universe. The story is nearly the same as Patterns of Force but the staff found it lacking. So when Patterns of Force came up, that Lucas was proposing, they decided to shelve Tomorrow the Universe. What I'm confused by is why the title sounds so familiar, it kept making me think of the Milton Berle story, He Walked Among Us. I guess it's related because of the damage a federation member does to a planet's development. Now that I think about it, there are several stories in a row with the same theme that I hadn't realized! The Horizon influenced Iotia, Gill influenced Ekos and Tracy interfered with the planet Omega IV. Plus Gary Seven is monkeying around with Earth History. I tried to look up other sources of information for Tomorrow the Universe and didn't find anything useful. I didn't cross reference with the first book yet, but I figure Cushman didn't really elaborate in the first book. But I'm really surprised there were two Nazi stories going on at the same time. Also surprised that Lucas was so enthusiastic with the idea of doing his story about Nazis in far off space and the way Cushman writes the chapter. Lucas just went nuts and wrote it as he wanted with no interference from Roddenberry who was busy with Omega Glory and Assignment Earth. His only outside input came from good suggestions from Fontana. Especially the McCoy comedy bit.This chapter is a real surprise to me for an episode that i would rate lower then the better episodes. It's development was much more interesting! And I forgot to add another actor with a twofer, Skip Homier.

 

[Ockeghem]

Nelson,

And Skip Homeier keeps coming up in other shows I watch from that time period.

What you say about He Walked Among Us rings true with what I've read over the years. However, until today I had never heard of the title Tomorrow the Universe relative to Trek. This sounds rather intriguing to me.

 

[FanCollector]

I have a copy of Tomorrow the Universe. I will share some details when I get home and have a few minutes. It does fit in with the second season subgenre of analyses of the Prime Directive. While there are many big differences, it is hard to imagine that Lucas didn't at least see it first.